THE ONLY DIFFERENCE

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE

The only difference between a winner and a loser

is that the winner cries out loud in crowds

that trample on his pain

and the loser weeps alone at home in his room

like a faucet without a drain.

Two drips of the same hurricane.

So why put these distinctions on like handcuffs

and spend your life looking for a pin

to jimmy them loose,

or run around in a panic

trying to make bail

by pleading with loansharks

not to bite through your cage as you drown?

You may know the truths of hell religiously well,

but are you as well versed

in the lies of heaven, or is it with you

that one turns into the other

so all the lies come true

and it’s all just a big mess of demonic stew

you keep stirred up with your tongue

to keep from burning on the bottom?

Or are you like most people

who spend more time looking for a guide

than they do at where they’re going,

who think the colour of their eyes tints what they see,

who paint their windowpanes to improve the view

and abide like first stones

in their righteous mansions of glass?

If the angels jump from heaven

so the demons can rise from hell,

you would do well to lie in your grave like a threshold

that knows the way in

and the way out

instead of trying to deport the dead back

to a native way of living.

If you were to ask me, and you haven’t,

so I’ll presume,

you need to take a good bath in a hot mirror

and wash that face off

you keep trying to renew

like a virgin on the moon

every time you start to seek the spiritual.

Clarity isn’t an enlightened target

you can paint on the ass of a baboon

and there are no line-ups and limousines

when the truth is screened like a lighthouse

in an empty theatre

and the sound of one hand clapping

is definitely not applause.

You can walk out of the darkness

like a shadow into a blaze of noon

while your mind streams the credits of the last dream

you’ve left behind you like a life,

or you can hang out like flypaper at midnight

and catch a few stars on the main drag

as if every constellation were the logo

of a mystical consumer brand

blinged out like a shrine

to pimp and pope its radiance.

Either way you cut it, the way I see it,

win or lose, up or down,

thorns, horns, haloes, cosmic eggs

or the full moon itself

in the begging bowl of your crown,

you’re still drinking cool aid in Jonestown.

PATRICK WHITE